Marcin WicharyFeb 15

This is a thread of beautiful or interesting computer-y things I scanned at the Museum of Printing this weekend.

(Eventually all of this will be processed and deposited at Internet Archive!)

1. You don’t see a lot of yellow in computing.

Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 15
2. Autologic had a very good photographer.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 15
3. This could’ve been me if I played my cards right.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 15
4. Both of these machines (Linotext MBK 500/600) are very cool-looking.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 15
5. Need a typeface fast? Call Type Express.
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6. Some evocative Comp/Edit product photos.
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7. Now LaserMaster™ Compatible
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8. Micomp High Speed Programmable Keyboards.
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9. Charles Darwin would have approved of Linoterm.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 15
10. You could have a 1,000 tries, and you would never guess how VariTyper named its Helvetica knock-off.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 15
11. Holy lord, look at this colour-coordinated Avis setup from 1979.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 15
12. This photo from the same Harris brochure is also cool.
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13. Just this aesthetic.
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14. I associate compact cassettes with cheap home computers, but that hasn’t always been the case.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 15
15. This cool drawing of a keyboard for a manual, with a lot of corrections and whiteouts (if you look closely).
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 15
16. Bad Boys (1995)
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17. More red computing.
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18. This company is called G. O. GRAPHICS. Cute.
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19. I would have put this in my book in an instant.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 15
20. More cool keys from the Photon.
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21. The keyboard of Comp/Set 4800, and an 8" floppy disk.
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22. Kinda looks like an Ouija board.
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23. A single stroke of this key.
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24. This keyboard is yet another entry in the classic Return/Enter story!

The main paragraph break (Enter) is a ¶ pilcrow, which is amazing. Above it is QC (Quad Center, or Enter + Align Center) and QR (Enter + Align Right), and even QM (Quad Middle? Not sure what that means).

And you can see New Line, or today’s Return, in the vicinity.

Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 16
25. Not fully altogether onboard with this colour scheme.
Show threadMarcin WicharyFeb 16
26. A very interesting typewriter wraparound with more function keys.
Show threadJoe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉Feb 16
@mwichary those knobs have to be a problem for touch-typing? I guess your hands are supposed to hover rather than rest at the front of the keyboard, but I'm sure they'd be a huge nuisance for most folks, or hand rests wouldn't be a popular thing for modern keyboards.
Show threadMark J. BlairFeb 16
@swelljoe @mwichary I gather that write rests weren't a thing when manual typewriters were still common, and typists were trained to hover and strike each key like a muscle-bound cobra.
Show threadMarcin Wichary
@NF6X @swelljoe Yeah, there was a great flattening throughout the 20th century. Selectric is already a lot flatter than the typewriters decades before, but nowhere near what we expect now. I think wristrests maybe only started happening when computers came into offices in the 1980s.
Feb 16 at 9:36pmWeb